Los Angeles Plans New Concert Hall

By BERNARD HOLLAND

Published: June 1, 1988

Los Angeles finds itself in the midst of a contradiction - on the one hand a continuing suburban expansion threatens to pave over much of southern California; on the other a cultural implosion is turning a retreat out of the city into a retreat back into it. Residential and office space is beginning to bloom again downtown, but the glue holding this renewal together is artistic.

The next item for Los Angeles's inner city is a new symphony hall, to be built on 3.6 acres directly south of the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. The Chandler now houses the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Los Angeles Music Center Opera and the Joffrey Ballet for its two yearly dance seasons on the West Coast. Nearby are the Museum of Contemporary Art and its newer spinoff, called the Temporary Contemporary. Adjacent are two spaces for stage plays and musicals, the Mark Taper Forum and the Ahmanson Theater. Next, Walt Disney Hall

The new development will be the Walt Disney Concert Hall, which is expected to be an added lure for life in central Los Angeles. The money, expected to be about $85 million, is almost in place to build this, the new home of the Los Angeles Philharmonic. The hall, with elaborate parking facilities (perhaps 3,500 spaces) to entice the city's car-driven society, will be built on one of the city's last major undeveloped properties. Groundbreaking is planned for the end of 1989.

''It was Walt Disney's ideal that art be available to everyone,'' said Ernest Fleischmann, executive director of the orchestra, at an interview in New York recently. ''We don't want a temple of culture, rather a welcoming kind of place.''

The bulk of the money for the new hall is to come from a gift of $50 million from the heirs of Walt Disney, operating as the Lillian B. Disney Foundation, named for Disney's widow. Some $10 million more in interest is expected to be generated by investing the money until it is spent.

The County of Los Angeles, which owns the land and to which the facility will eventually revert, will add probably $25 million more. The county's contribution will depend on how much parking space is eventually decided on.

Committees consisting of board members, administrators and members of the Philharmonic have examined concert halls around the world and interviewed several major international builders in the field - all in search of ''the best.''

Perhaps their most admired find was the new Philharmonie in West Berlin, praised by Mr. Fleischmann for its acoustics and the intimacy between player and listener.

''We also love, of course, older halls like the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam,'' Mr. Fleischmann said. ''But that is something I fear no one is able to duplicate anymore.'' Other Inspirations

Another space that caught the eyes and ears of the Los Angeles committees was Suntory Hall in Tokyo. And Mr. Fleischmann and his fellow window shoppers found in Cologne's central district - where the city's cathedral, arts centers and museums cluster together - a desirable role model for the Disney project.

Los Angeles, they say, wants to reproduce this kind of magnetic central mass capable of attracting their city's roving, four-wheel society. Walt Disney Hall, as Mr. Fleischmann points out, will sit at a major freeway hub.

The county has committed itself to major building projects on adjacent lots. Businesses in downtown Los Angeles are overjoyed at the prospect of the area becoming more than a 9-to-5 culture. They picture a walkable complex of theaters, cafes and restaurants. Thirteen thousand new housing units have been built in central Los Angeles in the past few years, according to Joanne Kozberg, a Philharmonic official.

The growing activities in the Chandler Pavilion have created the cultural overcrowding that the Disney hall is expected to solve, liberating more time and space for rehearsals and performance. The new hall will not be multi-purpose; it is intended for symphony concerts in general and the Los Angeles Philharmonic in particular, not as a theater or opera space. Smaller chamber-music theaters will be incorporated, however, and visiting ensembles will play there.

Urged by the Disney family to ''build the best hall possible,'' the board of the Philharmonic finds itself with the task of spending enormous resources wisely. (The renovation work on Carnegie Hall, virtually a reconstruction from the inside out, cost $50 million. The three-year old Ordway Theater in St. Paul cost about $45 million. Estimates for the Meyerson Center in Dallas, now under construction, have run to just under $80 million.) Acoustics Above All The selection of an architect to build the hall has been narrowed to four candidates: Gottfried Boehm of West Germany, Frank O. Gehry of Venice, Calif., Hans Hollein of Austria and James Stirling of Britain. A decision is expected in the early fall. A reigning idea for the construction is to build, as Mr. Fleischmann put it, ''from the inside out'' with acoustics as the principal concern. The Philharmonic wants to restrict capacity to 2,500 seats, 700 less than the Chandler now holds.

Mr. Fleischmann, who has run the Los Angeles Philharmonic for 19 years, is one of the more colorful and controversial figures in the music world. He is tough, ambitious, enterprising - some say ruthless - and has made enemies along his path. Yet even those who don't like him respect his energy and commitment.

His accomplishments in Los Angeles have, indeed, been more substance than flash, and are often marked by risk-taking. He has supported major contemporary music projects (most recently engineering the return of Pierre Boulez to this country after a long absence); this past season's David Hockney production of ''Tristan und Isolde'' and next season's ''Wozzeck'' with Simon Rattle conducting were his original conceptions. Almost by sleight of hand, he has raised his orchestra to an international prominence.

Whenever an important musical post becomes vacant, Mr. Fleischmann's name is usually mentioned. Three years ago, it was reported that he had accepted the directorship of the Paris Opera and withdrawn; his name was also circulated when the Metropolitan and San Francisco Operas sought out new leaders recently.

He was born in Frankfurt almost 64 years ago and raised in South Africa, where he served as a conductor, a critic and an impresario. Mr. Fleischmann has also been the head of Columbia Records (now CBS Records) in Europe and general manager of the London Symphony Orchestra. He is a restless traveler and a man of many languages and blunt opinions.

Asked if the kind of adjustable, multi-purpose acoustical designs now in favor might tempt Los Angeles, Mr. Fleischmann answered in character: ''Acoustics that are adjustable are admissions of failure from the start.''